Police are interrogating dozens of Ottawa students in their pursuit of the killer who knifed 18-year-old Brandon Volpi Saturday during a downtown street melee between groups of young men partying after their high school proms.

Two thrusts of the blade, one to Volpi’s neck and another to his chest, transformed prom night into an expanding homicide investigation and an indelible scar on the Class of 2014.

We’re all just trying to understand why this happened

Sunday evening, a tearful crowd of about 200, mostly students, gathered in front of Les Suites Hotel on Besserer Street to hold a prayer vigil. Bouquets of flowers, arrays of candles, ribbons reading “Rest in Paradise,” and a framed photograph of Brandon in a suit and white tie occupied the base of the Simon Bolivar monument in front of the hotel.

“We’re all just trying to understand why this happened,” one of Volpi’s friends, Kevin Charles, who, along with Kristina Wazen, organized the vigil, told the Ottawa Citizen. “He was just an exceptional guy, a fallen soldier.”

“Brandon was a very loving, very caring person,” said Wazen. “He was there to hold you, to take care of you, to help you,” she said, recalled when her friend supported her efforts to play high school football when others mocked her.

Varying versions of the circumstances of the 3:30 a.m. Saturday slaying are circulating among students and others.
Police confirm that dozens of students from St. Patrick’s, which Volpi attended, St. Pius X and possibly St. Joseph’s high schools were staying at Les Suites for after-prom parties. Ottawa Catholic School Board supervision ended hours earlier at the conclusion of the formal prom dinner-dances.

A number of students had returned from drinking at Gatineau bars and several students were milling around outside the hotel. The combination of young men, alcohol, rival schools and the late hour exploded.

“Essentially, there’s an altercation between some groups of people and, for whatever reason, that escalated into Brandon getting stabbed to death,” police Staff Sgt. Rob Drummond said Sunday.

A second youth injured in the brawl was treated and released at hospital for undisclosed injuries. Police are withholding his name at his family’s request.

Officers continued Sunday to piece together the sequence of events. “We’ve got two high schools worth of children” to interview, said Drummond.

Volpi’s father, Danny, said he has learned Brandon was at a nearby Dalhousie Street restaurant with friends when another friend approached and asked Brandon to accompany him back to the hotel because he was afraid of some youths in the area.

The father, who is manager of the BareFax strip club, told the Citizen his last contact with his son was a text message he sent about 3 p.m. Friday asking if Brandon needed some money. Sixteen hours later, at 7 a.m. Saturday, he received a phone call informing him that his son was in the Ottawa Hospital Civic campus. When he got there he was told that doctors had been able to briefly resuscitate the teenager but were unable to keep him alive.

Brandon, the father said, had been looking forward to attending Algonquin College, where he’d been accepted into to police foundational program. “It was a fresh start for him and now that’s taken away.”

Volpi was a handsome, towering figure and member of the school’s wrestling and rugby teams, who also practised martial arts. Those who knew him say he viewed himself as a “big brother” and protector. Ironically, Volpi recently confided to a friend that he was going to the prom “to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

The murder scene is just metres from the Studio Nightclub where a 24-year-old man was stabbed to death outside the bar in 2012.

Les Suites, on the gritty corner of Besserer and Dalhousie streets, was hostile to any questions Saturday and refused all comment, including what security measures, if any, it takes when handling multiple prom night after-parties and what late-night protection and security advice it offers to guests who venture outdoors.

Grief counsellors are to be on hand Monday at St. Patrick’s, on Alta Vista Drive.

Police are available at 613-236-1222, ext. 5493. “Anyone who has got any information that can help us, we’d love to talk to them,” said Drummond.

Prom-related violence is in the spotlight across North America.

A Michigan teen was recently shot and killed and three other female students wounded when gunfire erupted as Saginaw High School students and their parents gathered for prom night photographs. In Connecticut, a 17-year-old youth is charged with murdering a 16-year-old girl in a school hallway on prom day. Police are investigating whether the alleged attack was because the girl turned down the youth’s invitation to be his prom date.